Icarus

Continuing my Bond reviews of LastSurvivor, I'd like to recommend Icarus to anyone who thinks the cgi and bad jokes on Brosnan are too much to bare. If you really go for it, at least include Jaws so we know this is meant to be campy!

The faneditor did a very good job at removing the most obnoxious or forced anniversary parts, while refraining from cutting the movie so much that there's nothing left. But in comparison to the "post Casino Royale" age, the action is still somewhat artificial even with a lot of the cgi cut. Still, it's an ok movie like this as you don't get thrown out of the story by awkward moments.

One thing that strikes me as odd are the torture scenes: Knowing what the CIA does to torture information out of captives, the North Korean methods displayed in the movie seem like a walk in the park. In retrospect, they should have been less visual so the torture doesn't seem so Hollywood-style in comparison to the real deal.

For the record: I think Brosnan's Bond already jumped the shark in the universally liked Goldeneye when he skydived after a falling plane, climbed into it and escaped into safety :-}

Edit: I nearly forgot to mention - the best thing again is the audio commentary, please do continue do do these in upcoming fanedits! I with more faneditors are inspired by the value this adds to their work.

I was so excited to watch this, and Last survivor didn't let me down.
The tweaks were amazingly done and make this a true bond movie, they don't prevent the flow of the story at all, in fact if Last Survivor hadn't teased us with his trailer which essentially danced around the majority of elements that were bad with the original film, i probably would have only noticed the invisible car and intro song were missing.
as all reviews have to 'critique' in one way or another my only gripe was the surfing intro, i know its required to show bond getting the c4, but to me some kind of establishing shot of the plane landing before bond switches places with the diamond seller would have been more than ample.
also jinx's use of the word 'bitch' on the plane seems out of place, i might have omitted it to prevent it from sounding like an audio hard cut.

Fantastic job Last Survivor!, This is definitely my 'go to' version of the film.

Who could have imagined? The abominable Die Another Day had a fun, entertaining Bond movie hidden behind it!

This edit is a revelation. After removing the stupid humor, the awful CGI, and the reference overload, the result is more than watchable. In this form it's no more the worst Bond film ever, which it used to be for me. I agree with all the choices Last Survivor has made here, including the Q scene, which is about right and nothing seemed missing or abrupt to me, so redoing it doesn't justify a version 2 for my tastes (and if "Saved by the bell" is put back as another reviewer sort-of requested, I'll quit watching LS edits forever ;) The only thing that felt off to me was Jinx's "Bitch!" after stabbing Miranda, which felt edited and incomplete because of the delivery. Everything else was perfectly done. And the audio commentary was, as usual, a more than welcome addition. It's just as entertaining as professionally released ones.

All in all, at last Brosnan's Bond has a non-embarrassing exit from the saga. Highly recommended to all Bond fans.

I think the editor did an admirable job of cutting out some of the material that is silly and ridiculous, while preserving the plot, which is a difficult balance to strike when you are dealing with a 007 edit. Lately I have been re-watching a lot of the Bond films and so many of them are cluttered with annoying material that they risk being hacked to pieces by faneditors to the point that the plot is not longer understandable. Some examples of silliness that had to be left in this film for the sake of the plot are as follows:

- Bond and Company infilitrate an enemy foreign country by surfing the big waves. (gnarly dude)
- Bond meets Gustav for the first time and for some reason they get into an all out brawl of a swordfight.
- Bond and Jinx are able to get within 300 meters of their target in North Korea, yet they couldn't get a shot. That distance would be a "gimme" for a trained sniper. (Ok maybe this one is a little nitpicky, but it did take me out of the movie for a bit.)

Of course the list could go on and on, but the point is that the Bond movies are full of silliness and you definitely can't take them too serious. These are not the fault of the editor. He has to play the cards he is dealt as best he can. He really did do the best that I think can be done with such material by concentrating on the really bad dialog and some of the worst CGI stunts.

I have the 50th anniversary 007 collection and have been working my way slowly through the 60s, but having seen this makes me want to skip forward to re-watch some of the other Pierce Brosnan films to see if they contain as much silliness as Die Another Day. I think they probably do.

I also have not listened to the commentary, but look forward to it.